Politics: October 2007 Archives
Russell Shaw at ZDNet posted a link to this isen.blog article and asked, "Why not both."
This has an appealing simplicity, but it's not going to happen for several reasons.
- It's not clear that there's a business to be made in pure transport. Even old Ma Bell offered services. Stripping these companies down to the wire (so to speak) may make it difficult for them to invest in infrastructure.
- Define "content". Comcast's front-page news site? Their voice-mail site? Their cable service? After all, all those things can be provided by third-parties over the ISP network. Are you really going to make ISPs get out of the telephone business so that they can just sell bits-on-a-wire?
- Any attempt to define companies in terms of current technology is doomed to failure over the long run—and in this case we don't even have to look to the future to see this. It's clear that there are services which are more efficient to run within the network. These include VoIP and (hah) P2P applications (as someone on Nanog pointed out—it may even make more sense for ISPs to be encouraging internal P2P usage if they want to lighten the overall load). That doesn't mean that external providers shouldn't be able to compete on level ground (e.g. Net Neutrality), but it does mean that it makes no sense to prevent network providers from offering services which earn them money and benefit their customers. You don't want to legislate inefficiency.
- Finally, it just won't fly in Congress or the courts. You don't legislate divestiture, prevent mergers and acquisitions, in order to prevent problems which a) have barely occured and b) can be solved in other ways. And Structural Separation is a divestiture on the order the Bell breakup. It's just not going to happen.
Punish the good guys (and retroactively screw the companies as well). Sounds like a great idea!
What I find hugely ironic here, is that it's now virtually guaranteed that you could determine exactly who should get the money for each of these schemes. After all, iTunes knows what artists music was sold. But is the tax money going to go to them? Nope. Goes to the record companies. So perfectly good, professional artists (like Harvey Reid, whose music has been the default background for iPhone slide shows for years (Bach's Minuet in G)) won't get any money at all from any of these taxes. Why? He doesn't belong to any of the so-called "artist" associations.
See Harvey's articles on the subject, including:
- ASCAP & BMI -- Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves?
- On Copyrights, Music, & Money
- and also this Richard Phillips article, The Richard Phillips vs. BMI Story - How One Independent Musician Defeated BMI
It's one thing to say that sea ice in the arctic reached record lows. It's another to see by how much.
Technorati Tags: environment, global warming, politics, arctic, science
